Friday, September 06, 2013

ROME, September 6, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Anna Romano, 35, couldn’t believe her ears when she picked up the phone a few days ago. On the other end of the telephone was Pope Francis himself, who called to offer to baptize her baby after she refused to have an abortion.

“I was just so surprised that he had telephoned me. He said that he had read my letter and he wanted to speak to me personally about it and reassure me that someone was worried about me,” Anna, hailing from Arezzo near Florence, told the Daily Mail.

Feeling humiliated, betrayed, and that she had no one else to turn to, Anna wrote to Pope Francis a few months ago about her crisis situation. She revealed that she was pregnant with the child of an already married man who had demanded she abort.

In her letter, Anna told the Pope that she would not have an abortion and that she had told the married man to “get out of my life.”

Anna never dreamed of a reply. Then, when she was on holiday, she received the surprising call.

"At the beginning I thought it was a joke, but then he referred to the letter, which only my best friend and my parents knew about," Anna told Italy's Corriere della Sera.

“We were only on the phone for a few minutes but my heart was filled with joy, as we spoke I was rubbing my tummy at the same time,” she told the Daily Mail. “I would never have imagined that the Pope would pick up a telephone and call me and speak to me as if I was a dear friend.”

During the call, Pope Francis reassured Anna that a “child was a gift from God, a sign of Divine Providence” and that she would “never be left alone,” Anna remembered.

“He said that as Christians we should never be afraid," she said. “He told me I had been very brave and strong for my unborn child.”

When Anna told the Pope that she desired baptism for her baby but was afraid that her divorce and her being a single mom would be an obstacle, the Pope said that he would be her “spiritual father” and would baptize the baby himself.

“I’m not sure if he will,” said Anna, who said she can only think back to the call as if it were a dream. “But if he did baptize my baby it would be something else. That telephone call has changed my life.”

Anna said that if the baby the Pope baptizes is a boy, then she will name him Francis.